Problems have been “dragging” for years. There are 14 thousand nurses missing from the SUS. 1.6 million users without assigned doctor.
Os nurses of the public, private and social sectors celebrate today a day of greve to demand solutions from the Ministry of Health for several “problems that drag on” in recent years.
Called by the Portuguese Nurses Union (SEP), the strike will cover the morning and afternoon shifts, and a demonstration is also planned in Lisbon, from Campo Pequeno to the Ministry of Health.
According to the union structure, this is a “national strike for all Portuguese nursing”, allowing all nurses to be covered by notice, regardless of the sector in which they work.
Coinciding with International Nurses’ Day, the strike aims to claim, among other measures, the hiring of more professionals, the end of precarious contracts and the payment of retroactive payments between 2018 and 2021 relating to career progression.
The SEP also requires a 35-hour weekly schedule for all nurses, as well as the rejection of the labor package that the Government intends to implement and the proposal that is being negotiated for a new Collective Labor Agreement, claiming that it “aims to deprive nurses of income”, worsening the “problems that already exist today”.
“Risk of collapse”
The National Health Service (SNS) needs to 14 thousand more nurseswarned the Order of Nurses today, for whom this lack of professionals means that public health units are at “risk of collapse”.
“In Portugal, it is estimated that there is a shortage of more than 14 thousand nurses in the SNS, a number to which the Order of Nurses has successively warned, considering thatand this shortage puts the NHS at risk of collapse”, said the institution led by Luís Filipe Barreira.
“Without investment in nurses in Portugal, we will not be able to guarantee the sustainability of the SNS”, warned the president, for whom the current professionals are “exhausted, unmotivated and subject to enormous wear and tear”.
Therefore, according to the Order, more than a third of newly graduated nurses in Portugal choose to emigrate to other countries every year, “in search of better working conditions, professional recognition and progression prospects”.
Doctors’ strike on the 3rd
The Union of Doctors do Norte, affiliated with the National Federation of Doctors, announced today that it will join , in protest against the labor reform and the worsening of conditions in the National Health Service.
In a statement signed by the president of the Northern Doctors’ Union and vice-president of the National Federation of Doctors, Joana Bordalo e Sá, the union structure explains that doctors are returning to the fight because “the situation has not only not improved” but “is getting worse”.
Remember not SNS there is currently a shortage of around 800 family doctors, leaving around 1.6 million users without a designated doctorand highlights that many essential services, such as emergencies, continue to close.
Meanwhile, he adds, the transfer of care to the private sector has grown, “without any appreciation for doctors”.
The union indicates that what is at stake in a possible labor reform are “working hours of up to 50 hours per week as the norm, deregulated schedules, imposed time banks, precarious employment relationships and attacks on parenting, collective bargaining, the right to strike and union action”.
